


Abed's Mid-Season Cast Evaluation

by adorations



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Abed's Thought Process, Character Analysis, Gen, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, meta commentary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:40:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26039584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adorations/pseuds/adorations
Summary: Halfway through Season 2 of his show, Abed takes a moment to evaluate the cast.
Relationships: Abed Nadir & the Study Group, Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Comments: 21
Kudos: 131





	Abed's Mid-Season Cast Evaluation

**Author's Note:**

> special thanks to michelle and the trobed server for helping me with some pop culture references (and particularly, the star trek reference!)

_Jeff_

Jeff is a main character. Abed knows this from the first moment he lays eyes on him.

He wonders how it feels to be a main character. To have all your words and actions carry inherent significance. To have an audience root for you.

Abed wants to feel like that.

He wears Jeff's shirt. Sometimes he eats in his car. Once, he stepped into his shower just to feel the hot water over his skin and he wondered if Jeff practices his famous Winger Speeches while in there.

Whoever said that there was no good dialogue in real life must've never met Jeff. Abed worries own dialogue comes out awkward and clunky, but Jeff commands rooms and persuades hundreds with his words. That was what a leading man should be. Abed wanted to be like that.

What he learns along the way is that Jeff also possesses major character flaws.

Sometimes Abed tries to ask him questions about his origins, but Jeff recoils from his inquiry and becomes distant.

Jeff is also deeply insecure. He flaunts his body, and yet he fears it. He loves them deeply, and still suggests otherwise. 

When he drinks, he can get mean and spiteful. Abed can see that becoming a real problem in the future.

But that was okay. Abed understands those internal complexities. Also, main characters need flaws like that. It makes them all the more interesting.

_Britta_

The thing about Britta is that she means well, but doesn't always accomplish it.

She means well, but he does not want to look up the disorder her brother knows about. He doesn't need her reminders to think before he speaks and he doesn't want her to get him therapy.

But right from the beginning, she is unafraid of him.

She doesn't avoid conversation with him, she doesn't leave the room when he enters, and in fact, she actively searches for him. She smiles brightly at at him when she sees him and she looks right at him and says his name and acknowledges that he's there.

She's not afraid to touch him, either, which he hadn't anticipated liking as much as he did.

It's different, he thinks, because he knows her so it's more comfortable and less scary than being touched by a stranger. Furthermore, she knows _him,_ and still, she wants to hold him.

Her hair is shiny and her skin feels soft on his.

It's not always a large gesture, like when they nap in the study room and she wraps an arm around him and lets him hide his head and keeps him safe. Sometimes it's a smaller, more casual action. Her head resting on his shoulder. Her hand squeezing his.

Sometimes, it's the things Britta doesn't realize she's doing, the acts of kindness she doesn't even think about, that Abed likes the most.

_Shirley_

Shirley is a complex character and he discovers that very quickly. She's not only nurturing, she's fierce, she's oddly competitive, and she also has upsetting opinions about the quality of Brett Ratner's work. 

Abed watches people reduce her to a mother and a former housewife far too often. And that just won't do. Relying only on archetypes and stereotypes for a narrative? It's not very strong. And Abed doesn't live out weak narratives. Audiences abandon weak narratives, their networks flee and the actors scatter. Abed doesn't do that. 

Shirley surprises him sometimes. Sometimes, she joins him in his dorm to make fun of Kickpuncher, she talks to him about Hellraiser, and sometimes – only sometimes – she really surprises him and asks him for Palestinian dessert recipes. Abed blinks and tells her he's not much of a cook himself – but he can ask his dad and pass it onto her. And of course, there are the episodes where everything pulls together in one perfect Shirley storm, and she'll mercy kill his film to save them both in one act of courage he knows no one else would have. 

Abed considers himself to have a fairly strong memory. Certainly above average, at the least. He can whip out exact movie quotes at the drop of a hat, he stores away detailed information on the people around him and he can retrieve it with 99.98% accuracy.

Abed considers himself to have a fairly strong memory, but there are things he forgets no matter how hard he tries to cling to them. He remembers a lot of the words his mother said to him but sometimes he can't recall the way she sounded when she said them. Sometimes he'll simulate a reconstruction of a memory where he knows she was there, but can't pull up any image with her face in it. He knows, based on deductive reasoning that his mother was there in the background of many of his foggy memories, but he only sees her face in the ones that hurt. 

Not only is it not right to reduce Shirley's character, it's just inaccurate. 

But sometimes, when she rubs his arm and tells him that she's proud, when she makes sacrifices for him, when she looks at him with her eyes shining, he wonders if it's like having a mom. 

_Pierce_

The thing about Pierce is that he isn't always easy to be around.

Narratively, that works out well when their weekly plotline requires an antagonist. The rest of the time? It's a bit of a struggle.

But every character serves a purpose, otherwise it's a weak narrative. Abed knows that there must be a reason Pierce is still around, even when he is not actively playing the antagonist. Abed doesn't live out weak narratives.

So Abed considers him a reminder.

Pierce is stubborn, in almost every way, but particularly in that he refuses to listen to what anyone is telling him. He refuses to let the rest of them in, to hear them, to internalize what they're saying, despite the many, many second chances they give him.

So Abed is reminded to listen when the others try to to tell him something. And he tries. He does try. He's also reminded not to push people away just because they tried to help him with something.

The thing is, too, is that Pierce is old. He's seen a lot and lived through a lot. Abed feels fairly confident that he can ask Pierce for advice about almost any situation, and then do the opposite to be successful.

_Annie_

Annie wasn't originally meant to be on their show, but she overheard Abed developing and begged to join their study group, indignant and offended that she hadn't already been invited.

So, Annie is the straight-laced one. Maybe even the Princess type, like Molly Ringwald in the Breakfast Club. He's always had a soft spot for Molly Ringwald, for as long as he can remember.

(When he does the Breakfast Club himself, he likes to play as Bender, but in life he thinks he might be more of an Allison.)

One thing he learns pretty quickly is that Annie can be weird, too. And even angry. Though she often presents herself as collected, her composure can drop in a second and suddenly she's holding them hostage for a pen or crying over a Halloween party.

It's more than that, though. She also seriously debates with him about whether the green gummy bear is better than the red gummy bear (which he appreciates even though she's wrong) and she treats her stuffies like they're real living things. Abed sits with her one day and listens to their names and personalities, their likes and dislikes. She's not bad at developing characters. In fact, she's pretty good at it. He wonders if she would ever help him with that one day.

She's still young. She's still silly. Abed is reminded of this whenever she lets herself relax, and when she doesn't try to perform the older, more mature version of herself.

He likes to relax with her. 

_Troy_

Troy exists to him as series of contradictions.

He is unlike anyone Abed has ever met and yet he is achingly familiar. He accompanies Abed on his misadventures but he's more than a simple sidekick. He's invited to their study group on the basis of fulfilling the jock role, but as it turns out, Troy doesn't fit into a lot of the accompanying stereotypes.

He's sensitive, for one thing. When they watch movies, he cries. When they reenact scenes, he cries. When everything is moving too fast and confusing him, he cries. He's ashamed of it too, and that makes sense considering his character background. Abed doesn't want him to feel ashamed of his emotions, but sometimes when he's upset, he presses his forehead into the crook of Abed's neck, head resting on Abed's shoulder, his breath warm on Abed's skin, and Abed thinks that part is –

That part is not important right now.

Troy never makes him feel bad, either, which is not what he would've expected from a character that used to be as popular as Troy was. The popular, cool people aren't supposed to understand people like Abed for any longer than one Saturday detention.

And yet, Troy stays with him. He sees him and knows him and still he returns to his dorm, almost everyday.

Abed likes their sleepovers best. He likes the extended time with Troy and he likes watching movies so late into the night that his eyes start to burn.

He really likes watching how Troy's chest slowly rises and falls with each steady breath as he rests. Usually, the pull of sleep is heavy on Abed by that point, but he makes himself stay awake a few moments longer just to watch Troy without worrying what his face is giving away.

In The Breakfast Club, Emilio Estevez, the jock, falls for and kisses Ally Sheedy, the basketcase. That's the other way Troy fails to fulfill the jock role in their group. Abed doesn't see him kissing the Allison character in their show anytime soon, no matter how bad Abed wants it.

They're not built to be a romance. The odds are against them. It's not the kind that an audience would accept so easily. Abed thinks that if he's lucky, they'll get a few jokes about the nature of their relationship and their close bond and that will be it before one or both of them are paired off into a different relationship.

The thought of dating someone has never had Abed feeling so bad.

Still, he doesn't want to ruin the narrative and he certainly doesn't want to lose Troy. 

There's something romantic about loving a person quietly, Abed thinks. A soft, underlying devotion that doesn't leave.

There's a Star Trek episode he likes to rewatch. There's a lot he likes to rewatch, but he frequents this one. Dax and Kahn love each other and have to battle their residual feelings for each other that remain from their previous hosts, who were married. 

(Abed doesn't believe in reincarnation, but he likes to imagine any other lives of his being spent with Troy at his side.)

They share an incredibly close bond. It's commented on by the other characters. 

(Before, he might've used different wording, but now he'd call them soulmates). 

It's against Trill culture for them to be reunited with lovers from previous lives, so at the end of the episode, Dax and Kahn part ways. Kahn doesn't want to give up everything she's worked for, and she doesn't want to break the rules, so she leaves and ignores that part of her that feels missing without Dax. 

(He can hardly remember what life felt like before Troy, but he recalls an overwhelming emptiness in the spot where Troy now resides.)

They still love each other. They're just separated, unacting on their feelings, for the betterment of themselves and the people around them. 

(Abed was 7 when the episode came out. He can't prove that's the first time he saw a gay couple on tv, but he can't remember any time before that). 

But he loves his show. He's worked really hard to develop it, to cast it, and then to maintain it. 

He doesn't know what he'd do without it. 

Troy deserves a good show to live in as well, it's not just Abed. He wants Troy to be able to have hijinks and the goofy fun he didn't have in high school without unintentionally joining a romantic drama. That wouldn't be fair. 

So for the sake of Troy and the sake of the show, Abed loves him quietly. In the subtext. Off screen, when the camera is covering the B story. When he is alone, occupied by the mundane, too boring for even the most dedicated viewers. 

But Abed knows. And Troy is his best friend. He gets to be a duo, two characters that come in a pair. The kind that are always together even in fanart and promotion pictures. That's more than he could ever ask for. That's more than he ever thought he'd get.

All things considered then, it's shaping up to be a really good season. He's glad it's casted so well.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks everyone! if you liked this, please leave a comment/kudos!


End file.
